Wondering if your drywall crack is serious? Mark each end in pencil and date it. If it hasn't grown by the next wet spell, it's a patch, not a foundation.
A hairline over a doorway that hasn't grown since you first noticed it is usually a house doing what houses do around Bexar County. San Antonio Expert Drywall will come and tell you so, and a wall that turns out fine is a good morning.
The ground under most of the metro is clay, and clay is never the same size two seasons running. It swells in a wet spring and shrinks through a dry August, and your house sits on a slab poured on top with no basement underneath.
So when one corner of that slab lifts, the wall above gives somewhere, usually as a thin line out of a door frame.
There are two kinds of crack in a San Antonio house. One has finished moving, and it gets patched, textured and forgotten. The other is still working, and the cause comes first. Working out which one you have is what a drywall contractor in San Antonio is for, and most of the time it's the first.
Holes, dents and cracked seams in a wall you live with every day, filled and finished so the wall looks like one piece again. We find out what caused the damage before we fill it, which is what keeps the repair from opening up again.
How to tell what your drywall crack means →
Scraping the popcorn off is the quick part. Skimming and sanding the ceiling flat afterward is what takes the day, and it is what leaves it ready for paint. Older ceilings get tested for asbestos before a scraper goes near them.
What popcorn ceiling removal costs in San Antonio →
Cracks overhead, a sag along one side, and the brown mark that turns up after a wet week. Ceilings take ladders, staging and a longer day than a wall does, so you get the price before you decide anything.
What a brown ring on your ceiling means →
Orange peel, knockdown, hand-applied finishes and the older sprays, matched to the texture your walls already have. This is the difference between a repair you can find and one you can't.
Why Texas houses have textured walls →
A brown ring on a ceiling, a wall that gives under your thumb, and whatever put it there. The wet board comes out, the cavity dries, and we tell you plainly what was behind it.
What a water stain on drywall is hiding →
New drywall for a room addition, a remodel, or the wall that went out with the old kitchen cabinets. Hung, taped and finished, with the texture sprayed to match the rest of the house.
Hanging, taping and texturing new drywall board →
The dent a doorknob left in the bedroom wall, the anchor holes from a shelf that came down, a room you want looking right before the photographs. Filled, textured and left ready for paint.
Small drywall repairs, start to finish →
Hanging board in a garage that was left bare, or fixing the wall your car door has been catching for years.
Boarding out a bare garage wall →
Tape and float on new board, and a choice of how smooth you want the finish. The smoother you go, the flatter the wall looks when sunlight crosses it.
Flat wall seams and the drywall finish you choose →
Offices, retail units, restaurants and common areas, boarded, taped and finished. We work after hours and overnight so your space is back in use when you open.
Commercial drywall in an occupied building →We spray sample patches on scrap drywall and hold them against your wall before we touch the repair. Spatter size is what gives a patch away.
No guessing down the phone. We come out, read the damage, and you have the price in your hand before we leave.
Sanding throws off a fine dust that your air conditioning carries through the house. Plastic goes up before the sander does, and your floor gets vacuumed before we leave.
Most cracks around Bexar County come from clay under the slab moving with the season. We read your door frames and ceiling line first, because a crack patched without dealing with the cause comes back.
A patch can look perfect head on and show up the moment sun crosses the wall. We look along it the way you will from the hallway, and fix what shows.
A ceiling stain can be coming from the roof or a plumbing line, and a sticking door can be a foundation question. When that's what you have, we'll name the trade: a roofer, a plumber, or a foundation repair company.
San Antonio wasn't built all at once, and the age of your street is a good guide to what's behind your paint. Older houses near downtown were finished in plaster, by hand. The subdivisions out on the loops were sprayed with texture by machine. Both are ordinary work for us, and it helps to know which of the two you have before we price it.
Plaster over wood lath, in Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, Alamo Heights and the older blocks near downtown. The original wall can usually be saved rather than replaced.
Board and plaster side by side, because this is the decade the trade crossed over from one to the other. You can find both in a single house.
Sprayed texture and popcorn ceilings became standard. Anything sprayed on an older ceiling gets tested for asbestos, and nothing gets scraped until the result is back.
Alamo Ranch, Stone Oak and the rest of the 1604 ring. Knockdown or orange peel throughout, and the settling a new house does in its first years.
Run your hand along a wall in almost any San Antonio house and it won't be flat. Somewhere along the way, spraying the wall became the standard finish in Texas, and it never went back. People moving in from out of state ask us about it constantly.
There's no mystery in it. A truly flat wall shows you every seam, every screw and every wave in the framing behind it, and getting one flat is slow, skilled work. Texture covers all of that. Two finishes account for most of what you'll find here. Orange peel is sprayed on and left to dry as it lands. Knockdown is sprayed heavier, then flattened with a wide blade before it sets.
That's also why your repair either vanishes or announces itself. Filled flat and painted, a patch on a knockdown wall reads as a smooth island in a rough one. You can check your own walls in five seconds. Stand at one end and look along the wall toward a window rather than straight at it. Raking light finds texture that a face-on look never will.
| What's on the wall | The usual cause | How soon | What the fix takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| A hairline out of the corner of a door or a window | The slab breathing with the season | Can wait | Tape it, float it, match the texture |
| The same line back again after it was repaired | Something under the slab has not settled | Worth a look first | Cause first, then the repair |
| A row of round bumps across a wall | Screws backing out of the studs | Can wait | Reset them and refinish |
| A brown mark on the ceiling that feels soft | Something above it is still leaking | Call today | Find the leak, dry it, rebuild |
| A patch you can only see in the morning light | Texture that was never properly matched | Can wait | Re-spray and blend the edges out |
That table is a starting point, not a verdict on your wall. Send us a photo and we'll tell you what you're looking at, and if yours isn't on the list, ask anyway.
Send a photo, or just tell us what you're looking at. Usually we can say on the phone whether it's drywall work, or whether a roof leak, a plumbing line or a foundation question comes first.
We work out what moved the wall and hand you the price while we're standing there. Written down, not remembered.
Plastic up, board in, texture matched, everything back where it was.
If you're turning a place over, we'll take the whole list at once. Nail holes in three bedrooms, a dented corner bead and a stain on the laundry ceiling are one trip and one price rather than four.
Same goes for a house being photographed for a listing, where a patch with the texture unmatched shows in every shot.
830-429-4502
The oldest walls on our list, with plaster over lath still in plenty of them and finishes nobody sprays any more.
Up on the north side, newer houses on the hill, and the ordinary settling that comes with them.
Small, close in and largely older, where matching what is already on the wall matters more than anywhere.
A handful of older streets between downtown and the airport, with the walls you would expect from them.
Out past 1604, where the houses on a street were finished within months of each other and the walls age together.
Under the oaks north of the loop, from an era when sprayed texture had already taken over everywhere.
The three we get asked before anything else. The FAQ page prices ceilings, whole rooms and popcorn removal.
One small patch or hole, finished and ready for paint, usually lands between $150 and $450. Where yours lands comes down to how easy the spot is to reach and how much texture has to be blended around it. Ceilings and whole rooms price differently, and those are on our FAQ page. We'll come out and put your price in writing.
Often, yes, and for plenty of jobs that's the sensible call. A small hole in a flat garage wall, or filling before you repaint anyway, is work a good handyman handles well.
Where it gets harder is anything sprayed, which in San Antonio is most of your walls. Filling the damage and matching the texture are two different skills, and the second one is why so many patches still show under a lamp. On a wall you look at every evening, it's worth having somebody who sprays texture all day.
The big one is a firm price over the phone from someone who hasn't seen your wall. Two things decide what your repair costs and neither shows up on a call: how easy the spot is to reach, and how much texture has to be blended around it. Watch too for a deposit asked before anyone has looked at your wall. Proof of insurance is fair to ask for.
Call and tell us what you're looking at, or send a photo. Your estimate is free, and the price comes in writing.
